1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer telephony, and more particularly to providing an efficient service execution environment for interactive voice response service platforms to handle calls on a telephone network.
2. Related Art
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platforms, also commonly known as Voice Response Units (VRUs) or Audio Response Units (ARUs), are common in the telecommunications industry. It is common for a business that is a customer of an IVR service provider to use IVR services in conjunction with call center services. Interactive voice response service nodes are commonly used for customer call center routing. They perform processing of customer applications, based on one or more criteria selected by the customer, such as the dialed number of a call, Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS), Automatic Number Identification (ANI), time of day, caller-entered digits, geographic point of call origin, etc. The IVR service nodes may also perform other IVR services such as automated servicing of callers for customers, caller surveys, telemarketing, and call parking until a call center has an available resource (e.g., a customer service agent).
While there are many types of IVR service nodes each with variations in architecture and features, they typically include a network audio server that is connected, via voice trunks, to a bridging switch on a switch network. The network audio server typically include many network ports to receive calls and application ports to process the calls. However, all currently available IVR service nodes have several limitations.
One limitation of conventional IVR service nodes, in particular, is that they have limited application processing capability. The application processors of conventional IVR service nodes are designed so that each customer application is executed as a stand-alone process. This limits the number of applications that may be performed. Also, customers are demanding more customized IVR applications that require specialized architectures. This results in different types of IVR service nodes implemented throughout a network to handle different customer""s IVR applications. This results in an inefficient network because a call needing a certain application must be routed to a certain IVR service node irrespective of that node""s current load.
Furthermore, conventional IVR applications are complex software programs. The computing environments that execute these applications are often over utilized in terms of processing resources. Only a limited number of applications may be performed simultaneously. In addition, creating a customer application requires extensive software programming and testing. Therefore, what is needed is a service execution environment for an advanced interactive voice response service node that utilizes a common application processing program to allow an application to be created with simple references to service-independent building blocks (SIBBs).
The present invention is directed to a system and method for providing a service execution environment for advanced interactive voice response (IVR) service platforms. The system uses a next generation service node (NGSN) as an IVR platform to handle a customer""s telephone calls within a telecommunications network.
The system includes the NGSN interfaced to a telephonic switch network, All a reusable set of service-independent building blocks (SIBBs), and customer application files created using a sequence of the SIBBs. To keep the independence of the SIBBs, the system also uses a database of customer specific data. At execution, these data are inputs into the SIBBs and together provide IVR services to handle the call.
The method of the present invention includes the steps of defining the rules under which each of the individual SIBBs operate, along with their inputs and outputs. Composite SIBBs may also be defined using a sequence of the individual SIBBs. Once defined, the SIBBs allow the customer to create and modify IVR service applications without any rebuilding and retesting of the SIBBs. Thus, when a call is handled by the NGSN, the customer application file (a sequence of SIBBs) is executed.
An advantage of the present invention is that once created, tested, and certified, these SIBBs are then available to be combined in any order to produce customer applications. This results in decreasing the time to market of new customer applications and decreasing the turn-around time for modifications to existing customer applications. This also results in increased reliability of the customer applications created using the SIBBs and results in lower maintenance of the customer applications (i.e., changes can be made to the individual SIBBs and not the customer applications).
Another advantage of the present invention is increased network efficiency because a customer""s calls may be routed to any NGSN node. With the use of SIBB""s to perform IVR services, each NGSN application processor does not need to be customized to perform a particular customer application. Further features and advantages of the present invention as well as the structure and operation of various embodiments of the invention are described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.